


Romancing The Sourwolf. (Or, Stiles Stilinski’s 100% Foolproof Guide To Getting Your Man.)

by lucyinthesoupwithcroutons



Series: Teen Wolf Christmas [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Holidays, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Pack Feels, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucyinthesoupwithcroutons/pseuds/lucyinthesoupwithcroutons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The 15 year plan for Lydia was clearly the wrong way to go; Stiles won't be making the same mistake with Derek. He decides to do his homework this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Romancing The Sourwolf. (Or, Stiles Stilinski’s 100% Foolproof Guide To Getting Your Man.)

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Teen Wolf Holiday Exchange on Tumblr (teenwolfholidayexchange.tumblr.com), is a gift for Inky (inkyd.tumblr.com), and I should apologise for putting this in so close to the wire. As you can see from the 18k wordcount, it got way out of hand. 
> 
> I'd also like to thank Pyth (http://archiveofourown.org/users/Peahen) for the tireless beta work, for letting me bounce ideas off you/whine at all hours of the day and night on gchat, and for contributing my absolute favourite line of the fic*.
> 
> I don't think any particular warnings are needed (though feel free to tell me and I'll add them), but there is a fair amount of reference to Stiles' panic attacks and the Hale fire.

**Step one: Do your homework on Derek and apply to real life situations.**

**Step two: ???**

**Step three: Profit!**

**Totally foolproof.**

**So. What do we know about Derek?**

  * **He’s like a puzzle. A really mysterious, sad puzzle. (That you want to solve so he can fall in love with you and you can make him happy. ( ~~And possibly bone him.~~ ))**
  * **He drives an expensive car and wears really nice clothes but lives in the biggest hellholes Beacon Hills has to offer for some reason. (Further research needed.)**
  * **Not a big talker. Especially about ~*~feelings~*~ and stuff.**
  * **Loves to lurk. Is a _champion_ lurker.**
  * **Is _literally_ too sexy for his shirt. ( _Don’t_ sing the song to him again.)**
  * **~~Has NO sense of humour~~ HOLY CRAP HE HAS A SENSE OF HUMOUR. JACKPOT.**
  * **Left to his own devices he might actually enter into a polygamous marriage with the Camaro and the leather jacket. (As long as there’s room for Stiles? No complaints here.)**
  * **Pack is family and family is everything.  
  
**



Stiles walks into the train depot about twenty minutes late, trying to slip in without being noticed. It’s fairly useless, since everyone in the place probably heard his jeep pulling in, but nobody could accuse him of not trying anyway.

As expected, the minute he comes into sight of the circle of four beat-up old couches they’d salvaged from various yard sales over the last few months, every head in the place swivels in his direction.

“Nice of you to show up.” Lydia raises her eyebrows at him and smiles in that unsettling way that leaves him unsure about whether he’s going to get a good talking to or wake up in the morning with his kidneys missing. Possibly both.

“A Stiles is never early or late, he arrives precisely when he means to.” He pronounces grandly, punctuating it by swinging over the back of the couch and dropping down in between Lydia and Scott, a small cloud of dust rising from the cushions. Everyone is too used to the dust by now to comment and Scott is nice enough not to mention the fact that he only just avoided kicking him in the face, but Stiles still flashes him an apologetic smile for it. As entrances go, it’s far from his worst. He’d give himself three stars out of five for it. “Anyway, I don’t see our fearless leader anywhere around. It doesn’t count as being late to class if the teacher hasn’t shown up yet, everybody knows that.”

“He went out to see what was taking you so long.” A voice behind him mutters in his ear as he jumps about a mile in the air and makes a not-terribly-dignified screeching noise. Derek dodges expertly away from his hands as they fly up automatically.

“DON’T _DO_ THAT.” Stiles exclaims, shaking himself all over like a dog trying to get rid of a flea. “How do you even manage to sneak? I should be able to hear your damn self-satisfaction from halfway across a room.”

“And yet, you didn’t. Accept the loss and move on.” Derek says, enjoying himself far too much. He sits down on the opposite couch and waits for the rest of the pack’s laughter to settle down.

“Now that everyone’s here,” He begins, aiming a look in Stiles’ direction.

“If that's a veiled criticism about me, I won't hear it and I won't respond to it.” Stiles replies, leaning back into the couch cushions and immediately regretting it when the resulting dust cloud launches him into a coughing fit.

“Yes. _Thank you_ , Stiles.” Derek bites out when Scott has finished slapping Stiles’ back. His eyes are streaming and his throat is scratchy as hell, but Derek has his “I am not fucking around here, I need you to sit down and be quiet right now” face on at this point, so he just wipes his eyes on his sleeve and doesn’t say anything else.

“Ok. As I was saying...” Derek leans forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, his face serious.

“I’ve been thinking lately... that we need somewhere better than here. Somewhere we can actually live, use as a base. A home.” He finishes, swallowing hard, taking a second to compose himself before he continues.

“I—There was insurance money, after what happened. A lot of it, actually. More than enough to rebuild.”

Even without looking around, Stiles can feel how tense everyone is. Can sense hands clenched in the hems of clothes, eyes not knowing where to look, breaths being held. Erica is the first to speak up, in a small, unsure voice completely at odds with her usual manner.

“When you say rebuild, do you mean...?” She can’t seem to bring herself to say it. Nobody can.

“Yes.” He swallows again, his jaw tensed. “We need somewhere, and it’s... It’s time.”

 

~

 

It all seems to move very quickly then. One minute Stiles and Erica are working out the official stuff –what permits and official documents are needed, what work they need to hire someone for and what work the pack can manage themselves – and the next a house is starting to spring up on the Hale property, piece by piece, to replace the burnt out shell that Derek had been clinging to.

Suddenly there are long afternoons working together, bitching about splinters and muscle strain, trading good-natured insults and pulling stupid pranks. When Erica finishes putting in the new banister on the stairs, she patiently hangs from it upside-down until Boyd notices her and she pulls him in for a Spider-man kiss.  There’s a hole in the wall in the kitchen and Stiles sticks a pair of plastic eyes over to turn it into a face until they can fill it in. Lydia wanders through the house between jobs, alternating between correcting people’s work and burning sage while chanting under her breath. Scott and Isaac shoot balled-up pieces of paper at Jackson through small lengths of piping that haven’t been used yet while Derek pretends not to notice. It’s...  surprisingly domestic, Stiles thinks. Makes them feel a lot more like a real pack.

Though it’s not always such a pretty sight. 

For one, there are vicious, screaming arguments between Derek and the contractors about which parts of the original house can be saved (after the fire and so many years of neglect, the answer to that is: not many). When the head of the crew walks in, clicking her pen against a clipboard, and tells him most of the upstairs is structurally unsound, it’s only Boyd stepping in at the last second that prevents it from turning into a fist fight. Two days later when one of them tries to roll up and throw away the filthy rug that’s still sitting in the hallway, he storms off and they can’t find him for nearly a week. He comes back with the rug professionally cleaned – insofar as it was possible to clean – and wrapped in protective plastic so the building work doesn’t dirty it again, wearing a face that dares anyone to say something about it.

The third time he runs off is when the pack decides they need to do something about it. The floorboards were being replaced upstairs and they’d uncovered a keepsake box underneath a loose floorboard in what used to be Laura’s room. It’s faded and every last part of the opening mechanism is warped or rusted far beyond the point where it could still work, even if they still had the key, but Derek can’t seem to bring himself to open it by force. Instead, he alternates for about an hour between holding it in his hands, staring at it, and stubbornly trying to pretend they never found it in the first place. The pack know better than to suggest that one of them could open it for him, but unfortunately the same person who’d thought rebuilding the fireplace for ‘aesthetic appeal’ would be a good idea (the cause of the _second_ time Derek bolted), decides to be ‘helpful’ by breaking the hinges off with a pair of pliers.

He no sooner has it in his hands than Derek snatches it back from him, growling. Not the usual, low, guttural, but human noise it normally is, but a genuinely wild sound. His eyes flash red for the barest second – though thankfully Stiles seems to be the only one who saw – before he stalks out of the room, barely keeping himself from breaking into a run. Everyone politely ignores the sound of a pair of pliers dropping to the ground from shaking hands, all simultaneously deciding to look elsewhere while the man composes himself after Derek’s exit.

 

  * **He’s actually capable of listening to you. Who knew, right?  
  
**



They have an emergency meeting in the living room after he storms out, deciding to give Derek an hour to cool off and come back on his own before they try looking for him.

Stiles is in his jeep after waiting restlessly for 45 minutes, heading to check the train station first. He’s not sure what his plan of action would have been if he hadn’t found Derek there, but thankfully he does.

He walks along the carriages, checking each one briefly for signs of life, until he comes to the carriage at the very end – the one that’s detached and slightly apart from all the others – and at the very back of it, in the corner, is where he finds Derek. He’s sitting crouched with his feet on the very edge of the cushion, his knees nearly at eye level, beside the two cardboard boxes of things they’d been able to salvage from the house during their initial clear-out. Laura’s keepsake box is at the very top of them and Stiles can’t seem to shake the image of a dragon guarding its hoard out of his mind.

He doesn’t look up when Stiles enters, eyes continuing to stare resolutely into the middle distance. It suddenly occurs to Stiles that he came here without any sort of game plan, and that he might be out of his depth.

“So, that was an interesting... thing back there.” He begins, unable to think of any other way to describe it that doesn’t involve the words ‘incident’ or ‘scene’.

“How did you know I’d be here?”

“Well, you see I’m a master of observation. I have a flair for character profiling and stunning skills of deduction. I may in fact be the next Sherlock Holmes.” Stiles lets himself pretend to preen for another moment before shrugging. “But in this case? I had a hunch so I drove by, and your car was out front. Not the stealthiest of moves there, big guy.”

Derek’s eyes scrunch shut and he lets his head fall forward onto his knees with an exasperated sigh.

“You didn’t think about that, did you?”

“Go away.” Derek’s voice is slightly muffled, coming from behind his legs.

“I know you’ve got the whole alpha male who doesn’t feel feelings thing going on, but dude. Come on. You clearly have feelings – because you’re human, you asshole – and you are _terrible_ at hiding them. Just. Terrible.”

Derek’s head swivels in his direction.

“Don’t give me that look. You are hiding out in the ass-end of an abandoned train right now, with two cardboard boxes of old junk—“

Derek growls again, a low, feral warning sound.

“Yes. Ok. Sorry, you’re right. Old junk that _nevertheless_ has immense sentimental value.” Stiles raises his hands in a placating gesture. “I know where you’re coming from with the sentimental junk, trust me, but does all this not indicate that you _might_ just have some emotions you need to deal with here? As in, _before_ you run every construction worker in town out of your house?”

“Why are _you_ even here doing this? Did you draw the short straw?” Derek asks bitterly.

Stiles takes a deep breath and counts to five, not rising to the bait.

“Maybe I was worried about your stupid ass, you ever think of that?” Apparently he got a bit mad about it anyway. Oh well.

”Look, I don’t care what you think of me; you can’t keep doing the ‘I’m gonna threaten to rip you to shreds and then run off’ thing every time someone screws up. Nobody in the pack gives a crap if you lose it and growl at them occasionally; we have accepted it as part of your charm, or whatever. But dammit, Derek, you’re spooking the normals.”

He’s still not getting much of a response.

“I’m not kidding here. You have half the contractors ready to pee themselves at the sight of you and the other half would probably just pee somewhere anyway out of spite. And nobody wants pee in the house, whether it’s fear pee or spite pee.” Stiles sighs and shrugs his shoulders. “Think of the pee, Derek. That’s all I’m saying.”

At this point Derek is staring at him with his mouth hanging open slightly, his eyebrows knit together in sheer disbelief.

“Just, I dunno. Something to think about, I guess.” He rubs at the back of his neck nervously, completely out of ideas. “So, the pack said they were gonna order pizza when I got back, and I’d be going halfsies with Erica, which is kind of eat or be eaten, so I’m gonna just... go. Because I’m all out of pep talk and I think you might be about to eat me? Ok. Yeah.”

He sidles awkwardly out of the carriage and back into the jeep, making his way back to the house with this gnawing feeling in his gut that he could have done something more. So he’s surprised when, half an hour later, Derek walks back in through the front door without a word and grabs a slice of the pizza Scott had been eating all by himself.

Stiles flashes him a smile and, for whatever reason, Derek actually returns it.

 

  * **Looks sad when he thinks nobody’s watching. (Better not be planning a Reichenbach. Should probably keep an eye on that one.)**
  * **Loves anything raspberry flavoured (Condoms?? Would that extend to condoms? Do they even make raspberry flavoured condoms? Needs further research)**
  * **Doesn’t do fire. Any kind of fire at all. (Understandable. Note to self: No candles or fireplace snuggling if you ever do get a date.)**
  * **Says “You’re an idiot” when he actually means “I like you”/”That’s hilarious, Stiles”/”You’re actually an idiot, but I like you anyway”**  
  

  * **Communicates more with his eyebrows than with his words.**  
  

  * **Loves it when you have smart stuff to say at pack meetings. (Go hardcore on the research and aim to impress)**
  * **He and IKEA are never, ever, ever getting back together. (Like, ever.)  
  
**



There is such a look of pure and utter regret on Derek’s face as he stands in the middle of a sea of couches in IKEA.

“I don’t care anymore. Just. Pick. One.” He grinds out through his teeth, glaring at the book of fabric samples Stiles had picked up.

“Fabric is important! Do you want to end up sitting on this forever?” He quickly selects the scratchiest fabric he can find and presses it up against Derek’s face. “See! Uncomfortable. Change your fate, Derek. Make an informed fabric decision.”

“I don’t care. Why do there need to be so many options? Leather. What’s wrong with a leather couch?”

“Sticks to you in the summer, freezing in the winter, shows up clawmarks really badly.” Stiles rattles off the reasons like he’d been rehearsing them for the occasion. “Plus you can’t just have leather everything in the house. You’ll camouflage in and we’ll never be able to find you again.”

Derek’s face has graduated from “I regret my entire life up to this point” to “Lord give me strength to not kill everyone in this store”. Stiles would be worried, but that’s honestly just the standard IKEA reaction. Derek is far from the only person in the place wearing that expression.

“And we haven’t even got to the beds yet.” Lydia reminds him smugly as she passes by. “ _Lots_ of choices to be made with beds. None of them involving leather.”

Stiles is about to make the obvious joke but she shushes him preemptively with a hard look. “No, Stiles.”

“Nobody is any fun today, I swear.” He grumbles, but lets it go, spotting two of the wheeled dollies that are meant to be used for carrying furniture and have been left unattended. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, me and my good friend Scott here have a life-long dream to fulfill.”

He heads over to where Scott, Boyd, Isaac, Erica, and Jackson are checking to see how much weight the couches will take and grabs Scott loosely by the collar, directing him towards the dollies. Within a few seconds he’s got the message and they’re both gliding up the thin strip of open floor-space between the rows of furniture. Out of the corner of his eye Stiles notices Derek sitting down in an armchair and just burying his head in his hands while Lydia looks on disapprovingly.

 

~

 

 Through a combination of Lydia, Erica, and Isaac shamelessly flirting with the two security guards, Jackson casually mentioning just how many of their products the pack are looking to buy today if they’re allowed continue shopping, and Derek simultaneously glaring and apologising, they just about avoid being kicked out for the dolly-racing. It’s a close call though. Stiles is pretty sure the CCTV footage is being put on some sort of security Naughty List for future reference, but it was worth it.

“You know, the reason they have a playroom downstairs is so the other shoppers aren’t bothered by misbehaving children.” Lydia has barely stopped giving him and Scott the evil eye since Security dragged them back over to the group, asking if they belonged to them. Derek has been oddly quiet about it; like he’s transcended annoyance and is just riding out the entire IKEA experience from his happy place.

He does seem to wake back up to protest when they finish with the chairs and Erica demands they stop for lunch, but she quickly shuts him down.

“Hey, you give people werewolf metabolisms, don’t get mad when they need to eat.” She tugs on his sleeve, steering him towards the food court, knowing the rest of the pack will follow as long as she has Derek. “Come on, you’ll feel better after some meatballs.”

 

~

 

Derek does _not_ feel better after some meatballs. Stiles thinks it just _might_ have something to do with Erica getting two cinnamon buns and using them to give herself Princess Leia hair. Or how Stiles snorted his drink out through his nose when he saw her. Or even possibly Scott and Isaac using their straws to make walrus faces at each other. He can’t be sure, really.

The fact that – as they tackle the task of equipping each bedroom in the house with an actual bed – Erica starts making some fairly loud insinuations to Boyd about what they can do to make sure the beds are good and sturdy (for science, of course) doesn’t do anything to make things nicer for him either.

Thanks to a lack of werewolf hearing, he can’t be sure, but judging by the sudden disappearance of Erica and Boyd five minutes later and the collective groans of the pack as they hurry to a different section of the bed department, Stiles is fairly certain Erica followed through. Lydia, not about to be bested, pulls Jackson into a secluded spot of their own and causes the rest of the group to move on again.  At this point their numbers have thinned dramatically, and everyone is trying very hard to think about something other than their pack-mates’ flair for exhibitionism, so they decide to just pick out a standard frame, top it with a memory foam mattress, order one for every vacant bedroom in the house, and call it a day. Stiles is momentarily disappointed that nobody takes his request for a racecar bed in one of the spare rooms seriously, but he’s distracted by the triumphant return of Boyd and Erica.

Nobody chooses to comment on the fact that Boyd’s t-shirt is inside out and Security has started following them around the store again.

 

~

 

Lydia and Jackson rejoin them some time during the quest for a kitchen table solid enough to survive mealtimes with the pack. Lydia immediately takes charge, comparing wood quality and thickness, while Jackson just sort of hangs at the back looking content about the way his life is going. It’s the first time today he’s gone five minutes without commenting on how ‘cheap’ and ‘tacky’ everything looks.

By the time they hit the kitchen department, the list of catalogue numbers in Derek’s hand is so long that they’ve had to find more paper. Stiles is starting to think they’ve bitten off more than they can chew, trying to furnish the entire house in one trip. He’s ready to fall over, and everyone else looks about the same. Except Lydia, but that girl is a force of nature.

“Are we _there_ yet?” Stiles walks up behind Derek, twining both his arms around Derek’s left one and hanging off it, letting his feet drag, out of sheer exhaustion. Shame is for people who haven’t been in a furniture store for four hours.

“Get off me right now. I’m serious, Stiles.”

“Nope. Can’t go on. You carry me.” He sticks his tongue out at Derek. He’s not proud, but he does.

“You are pathetic. Nobody else is complaining this much.” It’s a blatant lie, even Derek seems to know that, but Stiles is still not standing for it.

“What about them?” He tilts his head in Erica and Boyd’s direction. He’s giving her a piggyback ride as she rests her head on his shoulder, smiling sleepily. Jackson is sitting on a row of cabinets a small distance away, his legs dangling a foot off the ground, and Scott is lying across five kitchen chairs with his arm draped over his eyes.

“You know, I thought I came here with a fearsome pack of _werewolves_ , but apparently I accidentally brought a bunch of five-year-olds.” Derek sighs, half-heartedly trying to shake Stiles loose.

“Well, nap-time _would_ be kind of nice...” Stiles pulls Derek’s arm tighter into his chest, solidifying his grip. “See? Scott’s already got a head start. The boy’s a visionary.”

Without warning, something small and sharp jabs into his right side. He flies off Derek’s arm with a yelp, crashing into a wired metal basket full of decorative pillows and knocking it over.

He looks up from his position – sprawled across the top of the basket, surrounded by pillows and feathers – to see Lydia smirking and pocketing one of the tiny IKEA pencils. She doesn’t even bother looking sorry.

“You’re welcome.” She says, patting a bewildered Derek on the arm and heading over towards where Scott (her next victim) is lying.

“Wow. There are like four billion nice, soft cushions to land on and you still landed face-first on the hard metal thing. That’s impressive.” Boyd just stands there looking down at him, still wearing Erica like a backpack. She’s having a hard time staying on because she’s laughing so hard.

“I hate you all. Where’s the sympathy? Where’s the justice?” He moans, sitting up and rubbing at his shoulder. “Ugh. Where’s the nearest first aid kit? I think she broke me.”

A startled cry and a dull thud comes from Scott’s direction, followed almost instantly by the sound of Jackson’s feet hitting the floor voluntarily to avoid sharing his fate.

Derek takes Stiles’ hand and pulls him up out of the mess, picking several feathers out of his hair once he gets him on his feet.

“You look ridiculous.” He informs him.

“So’s your face.” Stiles may or may not stick his tongue out again. It’s not his finest moment.

Derek actually sputters a little.

“So’s _your_ face. Just _look_ at yourself.” He holds up the compact that Lydia just handed him. Stiles looks into it, and he has to admit Derek has a point. There’s a... dent in his face. That’s the only way to describe it. The mesh squares of the basket have left a livid red impression on his cheek where he slammed into it. He looks like a human chessboard.

Derek hands Lydia back the mirror, thanking her.

“So, we’re just letting Lydia get away with the vicious attempt on my life? Is that what’s happening here?”

“Don’t be a baby.” Derek rolls his eyes. “And everyone pick these up before we get kicked out. Now.”

They set about cleaning the mess with a minimal amount of grumbling. Scott comes over, rubbing his side, to commiserate with Stiles as they work.

“Ok. That is _it_.” Derek declares when he’s finished promising Security that they’ll be good for the third time in as many hours. “I am your alpha. I’m not your dad, I’m not your teacher, and I’m sure as hell not your babysitter. You need to behave yourselves or next time I’m letting them kick you out of here.”

“Damn straight. We are not afraid to turn this trip to IKEA around.”

“That is _not_ helping, Erica.” He looks about two seconds away from actually stomping his foot. Stiles shouldn’t find it so endearing, but he really, _really_ does.

“Look, I—Wait a minute. Has anyone seen Isaac?” Derek stops, putting what was shaping up to be a fairly epic rant on hold to sniff the air, his face concerned. “I can’t get his scent. He’s not anywhere near here.”

“We lost him two hours ago. Looking for him would have just slowed us down.” Lydia informs him, apparently the only one who even noticed he wasn’t with the rest of the group.

“You terrify me on so many levels.” Stiles says as she walks by, which she just seems to take as a compliment.

Derek’s doing that thing where he pinches the bridge of his nose and re-evaluates his life choices again.

“Could somebody maybe go back and _get_ him?” Derek bites out, completely unable to let go of his own face from the sheer frustration of it all.

Scott and Stiles’ hands shoot into the air simultaneously, both knowing a convenient escape route when they see it.

 

~

 

They’d split up nearly forty minutes ago to cover more ground, but so far Stiles has still seen no sign of Isaac. Or Scott for that matter. They were meant to meet in the middle to report back, but he’s been on the edge of the office section, lounging in a swivel chair and waiting for the last fifteen minutes. IKEA turns out to be distressingly huge when you’re looking for a single person in amongst the furniture. He’s tired of waiting by now, so he goes to double-check Scott’s territory/find Scott. He doesn’t want to be the one telling Derek that not only did he fail to find one beta, but he actually lost another in the process. He’s calling that one Plan Z, to be resorted to only after plans B (search the store a second time) through Y (take the Camaro and flee to sunny Mexico) fail.

The next section over is small and filled with nothing but bookcases, so it’s a quick search. The bedding department, though? Whole other story. Thankfully he hasn’t been in it more than five minutes before he stumbles across Scott and Isaac.

It’s not that he hasn’t caught pack members in much more compromising positions before, it’s just that this one is far and away his favourite.

They’re both sound asleep, curled into each other instinctually; Scott’s arm is draped lazily over Isaac’s stomach and Isaac has rested his own arm across it. They’re both snoring lightly and when he looks closely Isaac seems to be drooling a little.

He clears his throat loudly and Scott stirs.

“Huh... wha?” He’s bleary eyed and bed-headed. Stiles resists the urge to pat him on the head and drape a blanket over them both.

“Well. Looks like _somebody’s_ having a good time.” He drawls, taking his time and enjoying it. “I’d never thought of you as a big spoon kinda guy, but I gotta say, you’re making it work for you.”

“I, uh... Oh. Wow. Um...” His eyes shoot down to where their hands are resting on top of each other, then back to Stiles, then down at the bed. Comprehension dawns in them. “Whoa. No. Ok. Totally not what it looks like, I promise.”

Stiles actually knows damn well it isn’t. Even with Allison living halfway across the country at the moment, anyone with eyes knows that Scott’s still too hung up on her to let anybody else in just yet. Isaac, in particular, is painfully aware of it. Stiles feels really sorry for him, if he’s being honest. He’s been there, after all; that place with the mooning and the pining and the hoping they’ll turn around and notice you if you just wait long enough. Hell, he’s sort of there currently. He’d even take it on himself to give Scott a push in the right direction if the way Scott and Isaac have been so thoroughly joined at the hip lately weren’t making him damn sure they’d get there on their own _eventually_.

But there’s a difference between knowing something, and letting Scott _know_ that he knows it. Because he’s not made of stone, ok? This is the single greatest opportunity he’s had to embarrass his best friend in a long time and he’s not letting go of it before he enjoys it a little.

“Just decided to have a little platonic, just-friends nap there, did ya?” He crosses his arms and raises a single eyebrow, staring down at them. Even he can hear the immense smugness in his voice, it must be downright obnoxious from where Scott is sitting.

“Dude. Shut up, you _know_ it wasn’t like that.” Damn. Scott knows him too well. “I found him asleep and he was really... Ok, he was _adorable_ – shut up – and I didn’t want to wake him up, so I just got on the bed for awhile.”

“There’s still a bit of a gap between ‘just got on the bed for awhile’ and ‘woke up spooning’, isn’t there?” Stiles isn’t ready to let go of this just yet. He still has Scott squirming.

“It was really soft and warm and I was tired, so I fell asleep.”

“You sleep-cuddled?”

“I think I _did_. Weird...” Scott frowns. “Maybe it was an automatic thing? Like, bed, warm body... You know?”

Stiles can’t help but notice that Isaac isn’t snoring anymore. He’s breathing deeply and evenly, but like somebody who’s doing it consciously now. In fact, Stiles can’t help but notice Isaac hasn’t been snoring since he cleared his throat to wake Scott. He doesn’t know whether that’s a good or bad thing, or how Isaac felt about hearing all of that. His hands are tensed, his left one clenching into a fist where it’s resting on the pillow beside his head. Stiles can’t tell whether he fucked up or not, but he’s not going to sell Isaac out at any rate; when he pretends to startle awake a few moments later, Stiles just plays along.

 

~

 

When they get back and Stiles doesn’t instantly inform the entire group of the compromising cuddling, Scott side-eyes him pretty hard, trying to figure out what his angle is, and Isaac shoots him an intensely grateful look.

“Great. We didn’t lose anyone.” Derek tries to play it as sarcastic, but there’s a weird note of relief under there. “Where did you find him?”

“Poor baby, all the glowering and the furniture arguments tuckered him out, so he lay down on one of the beds and fell asleep.” His tone is mocking, since it would actually be _more_ suspicious if it weren’t. It’s totally not at all because he still thinks the Sleeping Beauty routine is absolutely hilarious. Or, he tells himself that anyway. It’s probably a 60/40 split in favour of the former reason. He’s only human.

Derek just rolls his eyes and beckons them on. They’ve finally reached the point where they just have to order the furniture they picked for delivery and then they can go home. Derek had been planning that they would take it home and assemble it themselves, but while they were looking for Isaac he decided that he’d had enough. According to Lydia his exact words were “It’s going to take at least seventeen trips to get all this home, and I’m not taking you assholes on that many. I’ll end up killing one of you.”

Apparently he also opted to get the assembly service for most of the furniture, only leaving the simple stuff like bookcases for the pack to do themselves. Stiles honestly can’t blame him.

 

~

 

As soon as they get in the van they’d borrowed back when they thought they’d be hauling the stuff themselves, Stiles lets out a gleeful cheer, raising his arms in a V in the confined space.

“What are you so happy about?” Jackson grumbles.

“We survived the trip to IKEA without falling victim to the IKEA curse!” He exclaims, annoyed that nobody else is excited about this.

The reaction is stronger than he expected, with various moans, groans, and shouts of “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” echoing around the group.

“Exactly _which_ part of that experience didn’t seem like a curse to you? You still have basket-face.” Boyd’s face is in his hands. He’s too exhausted to even lift his head to call Stiles an idiot properly.

“Yeah, but we’re all still speaking to each other!” He gestures around the car, trying to remain enthusiastic in the face of the sea of scowls before him. “Most people go to IKEA together and pretty much never want to speak to each other again.”

“I could use a break from speaking to most of you right now.” Derek calls back from the steering wheel, where he’s gripping it so tightly his knuckles are white.

“Yeah, I pretty much want to murder you all in your sleep.” Jackson agrees, very deliberately not looking in Lydia’s direction.

She’s sitting with her arms folded, just as resolute about not acknowledging him. Scott has the kicked-puppy face on as he tries to figure out why Isaac is barely giving an answer to anything he says, and while Erica and Boyd are still leaning up against each other, there’s a definite tension to it that isn’t usually there.

Looking around, Stiles deflates a little.

“You guys have no IKEA spirit, you know that? I bet you’re all grinches at Christmas too.”

Well. At least _he_ beat the curse.

 

  * **Doesn’t drink alcohol, but he’s completely addicted to coffee.**
  * **_Will_ glare at you if you try to make him drink tea instead. Or suggest he takes some milk or sugar in it.**
  * **Really sensitive to smell.**
  * **Ditto for loud noises. (Did NOT take kindly to that time with the air horn. Even if it was just a joke.)**
  * **Takes surprisingly long showers.  
  
**



Stiles gets off school a few hours early, so instead of going home to work on any of the thousand essays he has due, he thinks he’ll battle his way through the woods to see Derek.

Unfortunately, when he knocks the door he can’t seem to get any sort of answer. After three or four further attempts, he figures he’ll try the back door, except—

Except when he gets back there, he finds Derek stark naked and rinsing himself off with cold water from the hose.

“JESUS CHRIST, DEREK!” He shrieks – right about the same time Derek screams “STILES, WHAT THE HELL?!” – and retreats back around the corner in such a hurry that he ends up flat on his back in a pile of fallen leaves.

Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know how the sound of running water didn’t register with him before now – it’s pretty damn loud. So loud, apparently, that Derek didn’t hear him coming. After a few minutes of complete silence from around the corner – in which he’s pretty busy being shell-shocked and idly wondering if leaves are any easier to get out of your clothes than sand – Derek appears in front of him, still mostly soaked, wearing jeans and a wet t-shirt. He must have just pulled on clothes without bothering to dry himself.

“Oh my God, you are _ridiculous_...” Is pretty much all Stiles can manage.

Derek’s face looks like it can’t make up its mind between Completely Mortified and Absolutely Livid, but it seems to be making a valiant effort at both. Capital letters and all.

“What are you doing here?” He demands.

 Ah. Okay. Absolutely Livid seems to have won in the end.

“Not taking a peek at your ass, if that’s what you’re implying.” Stiles answers, being the opposite of helpful. “Why the hell are you bathing with a hose anyway? People might see. In fact, people _did_ see. People who now have certain mental images burned into their brains as they sit in a pile of dead foliage.”

“They haven’t finished putting in the shower yet.” Derek looks like he’s trying very hard to pretend he didn’t hear most of that.

“Oh yeah, because that’s a natural progression right there. It’s not like you have an entire wolf pack who could let you use their bathrooms if you asked nicely.” He rolls his eyes so hard it actually hurts a little. “No. You just go straight to the crazy Bear Grylls option, don’t ya?”

Going by the look on Derek’s face, simply asking someone if he could use their shower had never occurred to him.

“Ridiculous. You are _ridiculous_. Just—“ Stiles makes a frustrated, flailing little gesture with his hands. “Ugh, just come use my shower, you ass. Come on. It’s got hot water and a guarantee of no lurkers or your money back.”

Derek looks conflicted. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, you idiot. Now help me up off the ground, would you? I think you broke me.”

Of course when Stiles gets him home, it turns out he’s one of those people who take hideously long showers. The kind that genuinely make you wonder what they could be getting up to in there. Though Stiles doesn’t like to let his mind wander too far down that road when it comes to Derek, because his brain tends to short-circuit.

 

  * **Smells _really_ good when he uses your shampoo. (START BUYING THAT SHIT IN BULK.)  
  
**



After an obscene amount of time, Derek wanders out of the bathroom, fully dried this time and looking much happier.

“Oh good, I was starting to worry you’d melted.” Stiles mutters, eye flicking back to his laptop where he’s continuing the enormous task of researching plant lore. So far he’s still on A (for asparagus).

“Hey, did you know asparagus is used in lust and fertility spells, because it’s supposed to increase male potency?” Stiles fires the question casually over his shoulder, partly because he finds it _hilarious_ that the plant that makes your pee smell is apparently also magic Viagra, and partly just for something to fill the silence. What he isn’t expecting is for Derek to frown and sit down beside him to see if that’s actually written on the screen.

Stiles is about to comment, possibly something along the lines of “I can get you some from the grocery store if you need it. Comes in a brown paper bag. Very discreet, don’t worry”, when the most glorious scent he’s ever encountered hits him. He breathes in, eyes widening, and tries not to tense up, but it’s not an easy task. He’s pretty sure that’s his own shampoo, but it’s never smelled that good on _him_ , dammit. He’d be fighting off requests for his hand in marriage if he smelled like that.

And ok, wow, Derek used his shampoo. That shouldn’t be so hot. It really, really shouldn’t, but it is.

He can tell Derek’s onto him too, dammit. There’s this careful, evaluating look on his face that Stiles knows spells nothing but doom for him.

“So, yeah, if you need to do general personal hygiene stuff between now and whenever they finish putting your shower in, feel free to use up all our hot water again.”

“What, really?”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. The Stilinski men are efficient showerers, we’ll be fine.”

“What will you tell your dad?”

“The truth, you asshole.” Stiles snorts, gently slapping the back of Derek’s head. “That your dumb ass was showering with a garden hose and I took immense pity on you.”

 

  * **Makes a really terrible desk. Just awful.  
  
**



Derek coming over every day or so for a shower is pretty much the most perfect thing Stiles could have come up with – and it happened almost completely by accident, too!

At first he’s hesitant – like how he pretty much fled the house the first time Stiles’ dad passed him in the hallway while he was still towelling off his hair – but after about a week he starts getting comfortable using the spare key Stiles had given him.

When he uses the last of the bottle of Stiles’ shampoo (unaware that Stiles had five more lined up in his room for such an eventuality), he comes back the next day with a fresh bottle and a box of doughnuts as a thank you.  They spend an hour or two eating their way through them in the kitchen (Stiles’ justification was “These aren’t good for my dad’s heart. We need to destroy the evidence”, and he stands by it), just shooting the shit together. It’s nice. Stiles thinks he could definitely get used to it.

To his eternal joy, it actually becomes a regular thing. Not the doughnuts, obviously – if they shared a dozen doughnuts almost every day, they’d probably make themselves sick – but Derek starts hanging around more after he’s done showering. Sometimes he helps Stiles with research or homework, though most of the time he just watches. Sometimes the pack come over with him and they watch terrible movies together. One time they even play Halo and the universe doesn’t implode when Derek touches the controller; which, honestly, Stiles would have been expecting.

It gets to the point that even after all the plumbing has been installed in his own house, Derek still shows up just to hang around at Stiles’, like it’s a habit he doesn’t want to break.

 

~

 

One day, after a particularly long night of fighting the supernatural, he trudges up the stairs and flops into the second chair Stiles has started keeping at his desk for him. Stiles doesn’t look up from where he’s alternating between making notes on the uses of belladonna in spells and writing an essay on supply and demand. He has too much to do right now, honestly. He does absently reach out and pat Derek on the head though.

“Hey.” Derek protests half-heartedly, batting his hand away.

“Oh, look, somebody’s tired even though _they_ didn’t skip doing their essay to help the pack last night and could technically be sleeping. That’s _adorable_.” 

“Oh, look, somebody’s doing plant research instead of the essay they keep bitching about. _That’s_ adorable.” Derek shoots back at him, looking pointedly at the page filled with Stiles’ scrawled hand-writing, half of the words smudged from excessive highlighter use, with a printed plant diagram glued down in the middle.

“Shut up. It’s interesting, so it helps me concentrate, ok?” He flicks the highlighter against his leg as he pulls the essay pages to the top of the pile, figuring it’s probably time to give the economics another attempt anyway.

“Thanks for the many offers of help by the way. I really appreciate it. You are a source of strength in these troubled times.” Stiles leans back in his chair, turning when he hears no response from Derek, to find that the asshole has just pillowed his head in his arms and fallen asleep on the desk.

He’d be mad, but more than anything he’s impressed. That position can’t be comfortable and he still took less than ten seconds to go from fully conscious to out cold. Not to mention, he can’t help but find it adorable; which isn’t usually a word he’d apply to Derek, but there is literally no other word for what’s happening right now. His hair is already bed-headed on one side and everything. Stiles isn’t made of stone.

Derek is still asleep when his dad comes home, which would be fine except for the evil grin his dad gets on his face and the way he raises his eyebrows at Stiles.

“We were up late last night.” Despite the fact that they hadn’t been doing anything, he feels he should explain. “There was a maenad, it... got kind of messy.”

“Uh-huh.” Is the only answer he gets before his dad is disappearing back down the stairs.

After a quick break to just run his hands through his hair from sheer frustration, he does his best to get back to writing. He doesn’t get to make much progress before he’s distracted by the sound of his dad’s car starting. Before Stiles even has time to wonder where he’s going, the sound of the police cruiser’s siren cuts straight through the relative peace and quiet of the room, quickly followed by the sound of Derek startling awake in attack mode and freaking the hell out. His arms slam down on Stiles’ desk – which, being a piece of crap, splits in half at the point of impact almost immediately – and he scrambles backwards, tipping himself and the swivel chair he’d been sitting in over onto the floor. There are papers everywhere and Derek’s eyes are roving around the room, his brain trying to catch up with what just happened while he’s still not entirely aware of his surroundings yet.

He stops still, taking in the sound of the police cruiser, the ruined desk, and the shower of school supplies that he’d scattered across the floor. Stiles sees recognition blooming in his eyes, closely followed by embarrassment.

“I. Um. Oh God.” Is all he can manage to get out.

Stiles sighs and moves to the window to see what was so important that it was necessary to run the siren right outside his bedroom window, but when he gets there all he sees is his dad standing beside the cruiser, bent doubly with laughter.

“Oh my _God_ , what the hell is _wrong_ with you?!” He shouts down into the street below. “You nearly gave Derek a freaking heart attack!”

It doesn’t really do anything to stop the wild hoots of laughter reaching him from the driveway.

“My desk broke, by the way. You totally owe me a new one, since it’s your fault!”

“Your desk broke?!” His dad seems to find that even more amusing if anything. He’s having to lean on the frame of the car for support.

“Yeah! And this essay is due _tomorrow_ , just so you know!” He adds, slamming the window for dramatic effect before turning back to where Derek’s still sitting on the floor, still completely bemused.

“Derek. Seriously. What the _hell_?” He offers Derek a hand when he doesn’t get any answer beyond a shocked stare, pulling him up and then turning the chair the right way up when he’s finished. “Ugh, here. Sit down before you hurt yourself.”

“I, um... Sorry. About your desk.” He looks like his brain is trying to reset itself. He must have been in a fairly deep sleep.  ”What was that?”

“That was my dad being an asshole.” Stiles rolls his eyes, raising his voice so his dad – who he can now hear coming up the stairs – can hear it. “And you going all, like, were-desk on me.”

“Wow. It really did break. I wasn’t expecting that.” His dad says when he reaches the doorway.

“NOBODY EXPECTS THE WERE-DESK.” Stiles exclaims. He’s too stressed right now to care if that makes sense. He turns the chair Derek’s sitting in around to face the door. “And just _look_ at what you did to Derek.”

“Hey. I’m sitting right here.” He protests, but he definitely doesn’t look too good. The confused look hasn’t left his eyes, the left side of his face has wrinkles marked into it from being pressed against his jacket for so long, and the way his hair is standing up looks like an almost perfect right-angled triangle. Stiles could teach kids about Pythagoras with it.

His dad has the good grace to at least pretend his snigger is a cough.

 “One of you owes me a desk. I honestly don’t care who at this point.” Stiles grumbles . He really doesn’t have time for any of this.

 

~

 

After they’ve cleaned  up the desk, his dad has apologised (for a given value of the word ‘apology’), and Stiles has salvaged all but one of the pages he’d been working on, he sits on the bed and tries valiantly use it as a new desk. It doesn’t go well.

Derek is sitting across the room in the computer chair. His hair and face are back to normal and he’s once again fully aware of the world around him. He has, however, been wearing the sourest of faces for the last half hour. It seems to be half from embarrassment and half because he was hoping he’d never have to set foot in an IKEA again.

“Hey. Tall, dark, and accident-prone. C’mere.” Stiles commands, gesturing with his left hand while his right one continues its valiant attempt at staying steady enough to write a full sentence.

“You,” he proclaims, “are going to be my brand new replacement desk. Sit.”

“I’m going to be _what_?” Derek asks, voice filled with derision.

“You heard me. Desk. Now. Turn around.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m not going to be your desk.”

“I haven’t slept in 36 hours, I have to get this finished _tonight,_ and you broke my work area. So, yeah; you are my new desk, and you can just deal with that. Maybe use it as a time to reflect on how it’s not nice to break people’s stuff.” Apparently there’s something in his voice that either makes Derek feel the need to listen to him or take pity on him. Derek complies in any case – sitting down in front of him with a long-suffering sigh and offering his back as a writing surface – so Stiles really doesn’t care which it is.

Though, honestly, it’s not that much of an improvement. The angle is certainly better, but despite all the muscles, Derek’s back is still too soft for the paper to lie flat.

“You’re not being a good desk. Make your back more even.”

“Do you even know how ridiculous that sounds?”

“I DON’T CARE. 36 HOURS. ESSAY.” If his hair were long enough, Stiles would have started pulling it out by now.

Derek looks like he’s about to say something, but thinks better of it, opting instead to push his shoulders back, evening out Stiles’ writing surface as much as possible.

“Thanks. You still make a crappy desk, but at least you’re cooperative.” He mutters.

 

  * **Actually has a ridiculous love of cheesy, awful horror movies for some reason.**
  * **Will just come and go through your bedroom window if you leave it unlocked.**
  * **Spends more time than you’d think maintaining the Camaro.**
  * **Sneezes when he eats spicy food. ( ~~It’s ADORABLE.~~ )**
  * **Doesn’t take kindly to being used for piggyback rides.**
  * **His birthday is on Halloween.  
  
**



When Stiles had found out, he’d just laughed. For several minutes, in fact. Erica was ready to hit him by the time he’d calmed down enough to finish filling out the forms they were working on. It had been months ago, back when they were seeing about planning permission to fix up the house, but the date had stuck with him. Who forgets the fact that a werewolf has a Halloween birthday, honestly?

So, the day before Halloween, a vague plan forms in his mind. Before he, Scott, and Isaac start their Halloween movie marathon, he’s going to show up at the house with some cake and his present for Derek. He figures they won’t mind him being late; they’ve been getting increasingly cuddly lately, and he’s pretty sure that whenever he shows up, it’ll be to find them canoodling on Scott’s couch.

He picks up a giant hat in the shape of a three-tiered birthday cake, one that actually plays Happy Birthday when you press a button, and has little felt candles sticking out of it. He stuffs it into his backpack along with Derek’s actual cake, the nicely wrapped present, and the thousand DVDs he’s bringing over to Scott’s. When he gets to the house, he presses the doorbell and the button on the hat simultaneously, taking a step back and a deep breath in preparation. He sees Derek’s face appear behind the door and he launches straight into it.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to yo—“ He pulls up short after the door swings open to reveal Derek’s face, looking shocked and distinctly un-pleased to see him.

Looking... Looking furious, actually.

Stiles just freezes as he is, standing with his mouth hanging open awkwardly, as he takes in the entirely empty house, the lack of light coming from all but one of the rooms, the general air of gloom over the place. It suddenly occurs to him that only he and Erica knew what day today was, and it was so many months ago that she more than likely doesn’t remember. And, ok, he didn’t know what he’d been expecting to come over here and find – because obviously there hadn’t been any party invites going around and if he’d thought about it for a second, he’d have realised everyone had plans that didn’t involve the Hale house – but whatever he’d been expecting, it certainly wasn’t this.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Derek asks flatly, his voice thick.

“Well, umm... I accidentally found out it was your birthday and I was on my way to Scott’s anyway, so I thought you’d like some cake?” Stiles hazards. It not as if it isn’t the truth, but now that he’s saying it out loud, it sounds weak to his ears.

“Why?” Derek’s frown deepens even more. That’s when Stiles’ natural indignation and lack of voice-to-mouth filter kick in.

“Because everyone likes cake! Even frowny werewolves who keep their birthdays secret.” He thrusts the cake slightly towards Derek as he talks, not quite able to stop himself making hand gestures. “And, uh... Birthdays are a time for cake!” he finishes hurriedly, unable to remember exactly why he’d thought this would be a good idea.

There’s a brief flash of a moment where he thinks Derek might knock the cake out of his hands and slam the door in his face, or maybe yell, or at least tell him to get rid of the ridiculous hat. Instead his shoulders sag and he deflates completely, his face resigned.

“Fine.”

If he hadn’t been sure there was something badly wrong here up until this point, he’s _certain_ now.

Now that Stiles takes a good look at him, Derek... Derek doesn’t look too good. Underneath the anger – which is uncharacteristic in and of itself these days, at least when it comes to the pack visiting the house at any rate – his face looks drawn, his eyes are ever so slightly blood-shot, and he clearly hasn’t shaved in a few days. It’s been quiet lately; Stiles tries to remember the last time he saw Derek, and now that he thinks about it, it was at least a week ago. There’s something else there in his expression too, something painfully familiar, because Stiles has seen that look before a thousand times in the mirror. His heart clenches as he recognises it from every Mothers’ Day, from his mom’s birthday, from his parents’ anniversary... All of those days where he and his dad make weak excuses not to leave the house; where they just sit around, barely speaking to each other, until Scott comes by with a box of pastries, under the pretence of ‘just being in the neighbourhood’, and invites them to dinner at his house; where they all pretend it’s just a casual invitation rather than the life-line it is, and nobody comments on the fact that Scott’s mom just happens to have enough food made for four people.

Except it’s so much worse in this case, isn’t it? Because Derek doesn’t have his dad, doesn’t have Scott, and Stiles belatedly realises that this is the first birthday he’s had to spend without Laura too. In all honesty, he feels like an absolute shit. Because if he’d been thinking for even a minute, he wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea to show up smiling and singing, expecting a happy welcome.

He must have been standing staring as he thought his way through all of that, because Derek seems to have gotten sick of waiting for a response and has turned back into the house. He left the door open though, so Stiles thinks he’s okay to follow.

He looks at Derek again as he walks into the kitchen behind him, noticing more troubling details. Like the fact that he doesn’t seem to have showered or changed his clothes in a few days. He seems unsure and agitated in a way that Stiles has never really seen him before; like he’s barely keeping it together. It’s goddamn heartbreaking, so instead of poking at him or doing anything _else_ inappropriate (he’s filled his quota for the day already), he goes for his go-to response in any situation and tries for levity.

“So, do you wanna wear the cake hat? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be on the birthday boy and not the cake delivery boy. I could keep it on though, if it’d mess up your whole wolfy vibe.” He looks up from where he’s laying the cake out on the table to see Derek glaring at him like he’s some sort of especially persistent pest that he’d crush if it would only stay still long enough.

“Oooooooor I could just go ahead and put it away. That works too.” He sighs, slipping it into his backpack next to the family sized bag of Doritos he’d been bringing to Scott’s, and pulling out the cake-slice.

“I, uh, I have a gift for you. Do you want that first or the cake?”

At this point Derek’s mouth is actually hanging open, his frown verging on confused disbelief more than anger at this point. It twitches slightly like he was about to say something and then thought better of it. Instead he sighs, like he can’t figure out why Stiles is doing this but he really wishes he’d just stop and go away.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks again, like he genuinely wants to know. Like he can’t for the life of him figure out what Stiles’ angle here is.

“I don’t know. Because I kind of like you when you’re not being an idiot and I don’t think you should spend your birthday alone?”

Derek lets out a bitter little snort

“Which, FYI,” He points his finger in Derek’s direction, temper starting to get the better of him. “I know you don’t want you to spend it alone either. If you’d told any of the pack about it they’d be here right now too. In party hats.” Stiles actually takes the little growl that rises out of Derek as a victory, because it’s infinitely better than all the sighing and shoulder slumping and silence.

“Look, I get it; you’re still hanging onto the remnants of the whole lone wolf thing, or whatever. But you’ve assembled a nice little family of misfit toys here, and mentioning you’ve grown another year and you’d maybe like them to have pizza and a movie with you? Not the horrible sign of weakness you seem to think it is.” He puts his hands up in the universal ‘don’t shoot me, I swear I’m friendly’ gesture. “I’m just saying”

“Get out.” Derek’s eyes flash momentarily, though apart from some fist-clenching he’s in full control of his body, so Stiles is pretty sure it’s just an intimidation thing; which he’s damn sure not going to fall for.

“Fine. Look me in the eye and tell me you want to be alone today, and I’ll just leave your present on the table and go.” Stiles leans forward – deliberately not breaking eye-contact even as Derek lets his teeth extend a little – hoping he knows enough about this stuff from experience that he’s right. Because he’s about to be tossed unceremoniously out of the house with teeth-marks on his ass if he isn’t.

Derek swallows and meets his eyes with the same determination.

“I want. To be. _Alone_.”

And Stiles’ confidence had wavered for just a second there; right up until Derek’s voice had broken and stumbled ever so slightly over the word ‘alone’.

He smiles grimly and says “I don’t believe you”, then jumps back from the table a bare second later, sliding off his chair in surprise and falling to the floor, because Derek had suddenly stood up, banging his hands down on the table with a crack that echoed through the room like a gunshot.

They stay there as they are, staring each other down, both breathing a little harder than they should be. Except then Derek gives him a good once over with his eyes – taking in Stiles’ ridiculous position on the floor with his legs still draped haphazardly on his seat – and deflates again, huffing an angry sigh out through flared nostrils and picking up the cake-slice.

“Since apparently I’m not getting you to leave any time soon.” Derek bites out, cutting two slices, in a way that Stiles can only really describe as vengeful, and tipping them onto the two nearest plates he can find. He sits back down and slides one across the table, closely followed by a fork, glaring until Stiles sits back down. Smiling, Stiles picks up the fork and decides to hazard a joke.

“Now was that so hard?”

Derek snorts out a few breathy, borderline-hysterical laughs and leans his forehead onto his hand, but when he comes back up, shaking his head, he starts in on the cake without comment.

Stiles notices his eyebrows shoot up as he takes the first bite.

“Pretty good, isn’t it?” He gestures with his fork as he talks, shaking crumbs all over the table. “I get one for my birthday every year. They even have some stuff to print on it if you ask, but I didn’t think you’d appreciate a Finding Nemo cake as much as the next guy.”

 

~

 

After the first slice, Stiles shoots a deliberately un-detailed text off to Scott to explain his absence. They end up demolishing the entire cake between them after that (as well as most of the can of whipped cream, the bag of Doritos, and the massive bottle of Coke Stiles had brought), alternating between companionable silence and conversations where Stiles happily does most of the heavy lifting.

By the time they’re finished, Stiles is surrounded by Dorito crumbs, sick to his stomach, and in danger of entering the food coma to end all food comas. Even so, he’s still pretty pleased with himself as he lies sprawled on the floor in front of the couch where Derek is in a similar state of disarray.

They still haven’t found the strength to move half an hour later when Boyd wanders in the front door.

“Do I want to know?” He asks, eyebrow raised. “Because it smells like whipped cream and regret in here, is all I’m saying.”

“I regret nothing!” Stiles calls cheerfully from the floor.

“I regret everything.” Derek moans, not even raising his head.

“Seriously, I’m scared of the answer but I have to ask.” Boyd shakes his head, amusement warring with concern on his face.

“Stiles brought cake. We ate the cake.” Derek drones, draping his arms over his eyes, not even bothered to put any inflection in his voice.

“ _All_ of the cake!” Stiles fist-pumps from the floor.

“All of the cake.” Derek confirms.

“And nobody threw up!” Stiles could not be prouder of that fact.

“Yet.” Boyd laughs, dropping into an armchair opposite them.

Stiles groans. “Do not mock our stomach pains. Why are you even here? I thought you guys were doubling with Jackson and Lydia?”

“Jackson got food poisoning from the restaurant and threatened to sue them, so we called it a night.” He shrugs, picking up a smear of icing from the cake-box on his finger and licking it off. “Thought I’d see if you were really here or just playing cupid for Scott and Isaac.”

“Trust me, they’d be cuddling whether I was there or not. They don’t need privacy, the shameless bastards.” He says, proud that he only lets the barest hint of jealousy enter his voice.

His pride only lasts another 30 seconds or so before he’s unceremoniously puking into the bowl they’d used for the Doritos, but looking at Derek’s fond eye-roll he can’t help but still be happy.

 

  * **Doesn’t grasp the concept of a Snuggie. (Just thinks it’s a robe.)**
  * **Also doesn’t understand the glory of Lolcats.**
  * **CAN NEVER BE LEFT TO DO THE PACK GROCERY SHOPPING ON HIS OWN. BUYS NOTHING BUT MEAT AND CANNED STUFF. ICK.**
  * **Disapproves of dietary necessities like Pop Tarts.**
  * **Doesn’t fight fair for the remote.  
  
**



“What? No. No, no, no. We’re not watching True Blood. End of story.” Derek makes a grab for the remote over the back of the couch as the title credits appear on-screen and Stiles ducks out of range.

“Ah, ah, ah. My house, my rules.” Stiles waves it in front of him teasingly, just out of Derek’s reach.

“I thought this was supposed to be a group decision?” Scott pipes up.

“I vote True Blood.” Erica raises her hand

“Are you kidding me?” Lydia rolls her eyes. “It hasn’t been remotely watchable since season two.”

“Nobody’s watching for the _plot_.” Erica gestures towards the screen where not one single character is wearing a shirt.

“Lydia’s right though. I haven’t been able to take it seriously since it turned out most of this stuff was real.” Boyd shrugs. ”And they keep getting it all wrong.”

Several different mini-arguments break out amongst the pack members – about very important things, like how much shirtlessness is needed to excuse the inaccuracy, whether they should watch The Vampire Diaries instead, and who’s better looking between Bill and Eric – and Stiles takes the opportunity to duck out to the kitchen for popcorn, the remote tucked in his back pocket.

 

~

 

“You’re not being very sneaky.” Stiles continues watching the bag rotate in the microwave as Derek’s reflection in the door freezes and scowls at him.

“We voted against True Blood.” He says, clearly trying to pretend he wasn’t trying to sneak up on Stiles and steal the remote back.

“No we didn’t! He’s lying!” Erica shouts gleefully from the living room.

“I want you to know I am judging you so hard right now, Derek. _So_ hard.” Stiles laughs and pours the popcorn into a giant bowl, balancing the remote in the crook of his arm. “Just accept defeat and enjoy Joe Manganiello’s abs with some popcorn. You’ll feel better.”

Derek’s scowl amps up a few notches.

“Oh my _God_ , is that what this is about? Are you jealous of the hot TV werewolves?”

“What? No. That’s ridiculous.”

“Aw, does somebody need some validation? Your abs are totally nicer than his. They’re the nicest abs in all the land.” Stiles teases, ducking away as Derek takes another swipe at the remote. Popcorn pieces drop like a trail of breadcrumbs behind him as he runs into the living room.

“Derek’s too sexy for his shirt, too sexy for his shirt, so sexy it hurts.” He sings over his shoulder, barely able to get the words out around his laughter. No sooner has he deposited the bowl in Scott’s lap than Derek is tackling him onto the couch.

They slide off and roll across the floor, the pack cheering them on as they wrestle for the remote. Stiles is pretty sure he’s getting some serious carpet burns and his shirt has ridden up to the point that it’s bunched under his armpits, but he just can’t stop giggling. Even Derek is laughing. Except suddenly they’ve fallen into a position where Derek is on top, poised over him, pinning his wrists to the floor above his head. Stiles’ breath hitches and they both freeze, staring into each other’s eyes. His heart is pounding and Derek looks like somebody unexpectedly hit him across the face with a shovel. His hand relaxes, letting the remote drop, though Derek doesn’t even seem to notice.

Somebody in the room clears their throat, though he has no idea who, and they snap out of it immediately. Derek grabs the remote and scrambles to his feet, avoiding Stiles’ eyes. He looks like it’s the last thing he wants to have in his hand, like it’s red hot and he wants to drop it, but can’t  because it would make what just happened look even stranger.

“Give that here, you big bully.” Lydia demands, breaking the awkward silence as she takes the remote Derek practically flings at her. “You can get the channel changed without breaking Stiles, you know.”

The volume goes up to a level that’s nearly intolerable – even to Stiles’ ears – as Lydia’s hand makes contact with the remote. The entire pack winces and covers their ears, curling in on themselves against the noise.

“Oops, sorry. Finger slipped.” She smiles sweetly, pulls it back down to a normal volume and starts flicking idly through the channels. While everyone is distracted, she flashes a ‘you’re _welcome_ , you idiots’ look at both Derek and Stiles in turn, rolling her eyes.

Stiles levers himself off the floor and into a vacant armchair, trying to look like he’s not about to throw up or his legs aren’t shaking. Derek is still very resolutely not meeting his eyes, and he hopes the TV is loud enough that nobody can hear his heartbeat.

 

  * **Secretly loves having his head ~~petted~~ ~~rubbed scratched~~ _MASSAGED.  
  
_**



Stiles hasn’t been _avoiding_ Derek (and by extension, pretty much the entire pack apart from Scott) in the few days since the remote incident, per se. He has homework and a life outside the pack to maintain, doesn’t he? He just needed a break, is all.

He’s in the middle of a marathon Halo session, so when he hears the back door open and close, he doesn’t pay a huge amount of attention to it. He figures either his dad forgot something important and he’s sneaking back in to retrieve it, or Scott had to wolf out in the woods and Stiles’ house was closer for a clean change of clothes. Neither situation is a rare one, really. So it’s only when he notices a distinctly Derek-shaped shadow being cast across the floor that he even bothers to look up.

“Wha—OH MY GOD!” All previous awkwardness is wiped away by a single spike of panic. He’s about to leap up and... He doesn’t know exactly, just. Just do something. Maybe find a chair to sit Derek down in before he falls over; it seems like the most pressing concern. But before he can even move from the couch, Derek holds up the hand that isn’t currently supporting him against the doorframe and says “No. Just. Sit. _Please_.”

His voice is hollow and desperate, and brooks absolutely no argument. Especially the ‘please’. That‘s setting off alarm bells in Stiles’ head like nobody’s business. Because Derek? Not generally a ‘please’ sort of guy.

Derek pushes himself off the doorframe, walks a few steps and then unceremoniously drops across the couch with his head pillowed in Stiles’ lap, letting out this horrible, frustrated, world-weary sigh. And Stiles has no clue what to do now. Absolutely no clue. Because this is pretty much the Derek Hale equivalent of coming to his house and sobbing helplessly into his chest for an hour. This is deeply worrying behaviour.

Stiles swallows hard, taking an inventory of all the visible problems. For one thing Derek is _filthy_. (If he weren’t so concerned he’d definitely be commenting on all the dirt that just got tracked through the house. There would possibly be a joke about house-training in there; Stiles isn’t proud of that fact, but it’s true.) Then of course there are the long, jagged slashes through his tank-top, the dried blood keeping it stuck to him in several places and hinting at freshly healed injuries. When he looks closely, Stiles can see lines of what looks like scar tissue; wounds that had to have been deep to still show up at all. His eyes alight on several black-ringed holes through the fabric that look far too much like scorch marks to be anything else, and he sees red, his hands tightening helplessly into fists at his side.

He honestly doesn’t know what to do here, how to make this better in any way, but he knows he needs to do _something_. Even without the energy necessary to stand up under his own power, Derek is still managing to tense so thoroughly as he lies across the couch that Stiles is _pretty_ sure he could snap the poor guy in half if he really made the effort. A quick glance reveals no dried blood in Derek's hair, so he assumes that’s a safe zone. Taking a deep breath, he risks running his fingers through it.

The effect is _immediate_. At least half of the tension just drains straight out of him, accompanied by a low, pitiful whine that Stiles will be charitable about and pretend he didn’t hear.

After that he spends a good half hour just running his hand through Derek’s hair, massaging his head, and occasionally humming quietly to himself. He continues his charitable streak by not pointing out the very obvious dog-petting parallels. Gradually the rest of the tension leaks out of Derek’s body and he eventually gets to the point where he could easily be asleep; though of course Stiles knows he isn’t.

Eventually the mystery becomes too much for him.

“Hey, not to undermine this lovely relaxed trance I’ve spent the last half hour working you into, but I just gotta ask; what the fuck _happened_ to you today? Because it seems like it was ridiculously bad, even by your standards. Which is saying something.”

All he gets is a sigh.

“Come on, at least give me a general idea. You look like somebody dragged you through the woods backwards and then tossed you under a lawnmower.”

Still nothing. Suddenly Stiles freezes and his blood runs cold. Because what if...

“Hey. Hey, we didn’t lose anybody did we?!” He sits bolt upright, his voice rising up through several octaves. “You tell me _right_ now if we—“

“No! No, everyone’s-- Everyone’s fine. Deaton’s taking care of Boyd and Jackson, but nothing that won’t heal.” Derek finally answers, voice low and rough. It sounds like he swallowed gravel; which, hell, he might have. Stiles doesn’t know. “Half of them weren’t even... It was just those two, me, and Scott. We were tracking a wendigo, the hunters got involved, they had new arrows...”

Stiles realises as soon as Derek mentions the arrows, exactly why the scorch marks are so perfectly symmetrical, why they’re all in and around the same size: the hunters have started using flaming arrows.

“Oh God, Derek...” He can’t keep the pity or the horror out of his voice, no matter how much he knows Derek wants to hear neither of them.

“And Jackson never guards his flank. He was too busy bickering with Scott, and Boyd tried to protect them, I just. Everything was such a disaster. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t _ever_ want to talk about it.” There’s that desperate, heart-rending sigh again. Stiles knows better than to press any further.

“Ok. Long day, I get that. No more questions from Stiles. Not from this guy, no siree. We can just sit here for as long as you want.”

He feels Derek relaxing against him again.

“Thank you. I needed somewhere to go, but I didn’t—Just. Thank you.”

Stiles bites his lip to keep from blurting out something he’ll be embarrassed about later and just keeps running his hand through Derek’s hair, feeling gratified at the pleased little noises he seems to be producing.

“You should stay for dinner. “ Stiles blurts out without really meaning to. It’s not the worst thing he could have said by a long shot, so he doesn’t mind too much. “I mean, you’re going to have to shower and borrow one of my shirts at some point in the next three hours before my dad gets home. Because, you know, if he walks in here and sees all the blood, and the dirt, and the action movie t-shirt you’ve got going on there? He’s gonna have a heart attack right here in the middle of the living room. Then he’s going to kick your ass out of the house and ground me from all pack activities _forever_. And I’d rather not have that if we can avoid it, ok?”

Derek nods absently, not even opening his eyes. “Shower. Dinner. Got it.”

He doesn’t seem like he has the energy to get up, never mind actually shower, so Stiles just sits there and lets him get some sleep until he can.

 

  * **Has perfected his “I don’t get that reference, but I know damn well when I’m being made fun of” face.**
  * **Didn’t really appreciate the Christmas shenanigans.  
  
**



They’re supposed to be decorating the house like responsible adults. Stiles gets that, really, he does. It’s just that that’s not really half as fun as what they end up doing.

It starts with Erica weaving two strings of red and gold tinsel around herself like a feather boa and dancing on the table – occasionally twirling them and snapping them at people like a wet towel – and it kind of devolves from there.

Soon there isn’t a member of the pack without at least one bow or small Christmas tree decoration somewhere on their head. Lydia has expertly woven five jingle bells into her loose curls that tinkle when she walks. Jackson put his feet inside one of the ridiculously oversized stockings and convinced Boyd to do the same, which has resulted in them having a pretty decent (ongoing) sack race around the house. Stiles and Erica have abandoned the pretence of wrapping gifts entirely and instead opted to turn Scott and Isaac into one giant human present on the floor.

Stiles is actually more than a little proud that he and Erica picked the best activity, because soon enough the entire pack (minus Derek, who stepped out to pick up some more food and entrusted them with decorating in the mean time) has gathered around to help. Scott has ribbon winding through his hair and occasionally falling into his eyes, and there’s a bow perched on Isaac’s curls that keeps falling off. Scott had been picking it up and sticking it back on every time it fell, but now they’re at the point where both their arms are too trapped to do anything about it. Erica takes over this duty with enthusiasm, pressing it to his forehead hard enough for it to stick and tossing some glitter over them for good measure. Stiles isn’t even sure where she found the glitter, but he doesn’t question it; it’s just Christmas.

He notices Isaac is slightly higher than Scott in their little human burrito, his lips pressed into Scott’s hair purely by merit of the position they’re in, and Scott’s face is buried in his neck. They both look content in a way that Stiles hasn’t seen for awhile in either of their faces. He shares a conspiratorial “Well done. A+ planning” look with Erica, who he’s sure is entirely responsible for the way they’re arranged.

Lydia is snapping pictures and Stiles is in the middle of drawing a “you tried” star to tape to the outside of the blanket of wrapping paper they’re now encased in, when Derek walks back in. It’s Derek’s own fault really. He’s meant to be the responsible one/the wet blanket, but he left them to their own devices, so now he has no-one to blame but himself.

“What happened to ‘You can count on us, Derek’? It looks like a Christmas bomb went off in here.” He says in disgust.

Stiles skids past him to attach the star as a finishing touch.

“But they’re so adorable, Derek.” He reaches out and pinches Scott’s cheek. “How can you say no to this precious widdle face?”

“No.” Derek replies flatly, bringing the grocery bags through to the kitchen and re-filling the fridge.

“Thanks _so_ much for helping with the groceries, by the way.” He raises his voice entirely for Stiles’ benefit. “I know it was hard to tear yourselves away from all the hard work you’ve been doing with the decorations.”

“You’re welcome.” The entire pack choruses, not bothering to look up from where they’re putting the finishing touches on Scott and Isaac. Erica finishes scrawling “Do not open before Christmas” across the side of Scott’s face and then they all stand back to survey their work.

When Derek walks back in, they’re all taking pictures; falling over each other for the best angle and dropping down next to the two gift-wrapped wolves to pose. The air is ringing with laughter and Scott’s increasingly indignant protests that he needs to go to the bathroom soon.

 Stiles smiles up at him, planning to cajole him into joining their little puppy pile, but there’s something in Derek’s expression that makes him stop.

He’s staring at the wild tangle of limbs and wrapping paper on the floor with his hands clenched tightly on the cuffs of his jacket, his mouth in a tight line, and a faraway look in his eyes; like he’s watching something that only he can see. And suddenly Stiles sees the room not as it is – so newly rebuilt that it still smells faintly of wood shavings and wet paint – but as it was before; the way Derek must be seeing it. He sees Derek and Laura as teenagers, decorating the tree and laughing; surrounded by their parents, their siblings, their aunt and uncle, and their cousins. He sees the Hale family whole and thriving; everything that Derek lost.

Derek swallows, coming back to the present again, and turns back into the kitchen. Everyone else is too distracted to notice him going. Stiles is going to count to twenty and then follow him. He doesn’t want to make it obvious, but he needs to—

Before he can even complete the thought, Derek is back in the room, his poker face firmly on. If Stiles hadn’t seen him before – if he weren’t looking for the slight tightness in his smile now, the way it isn’t quite meeting his eyes – he’d never have known.

 

~

 

After being forced to clean up their mess, they all settle in to watch a movie.

Scott and Isaac have snuggled into Derek’s massive armchair together. Who they think they’re fooling, Stiles has no idea, but, as always, nobody comments. The rest of the pack have long had a silent agreement to let them figure it out on their own with only minimal pushing. Obviously there have been some liberal interpretations made of ‘minimal pushing’ (the wrapping paper stunt being a prime example), but by and large they’re restrained themselves. It’s getting harder and harder by the day to not just grab them both by the back of the head and yell “now kiss” at them.

Stiles is sprawled across the bigger couch with Erica and Boyd and Derek is stuck on the smaller one with Jackson and Lydia, who have been sniping at each other for the better part of the last half hour. He’s looking increasingly uncomfortable by the minute.

Sure enough, it’s less than five minutes before he makes an excuse to escape to the kitchen. Stiles counts to twenty and says he’s going to get more popcorn. Lydia raises her eyebrows at him as he goes, but he doesn’t care.

 

~

 

“Hey.”

“Oh. Hi.” Derek has his head buried in the fridge when Stiles walks in.

“So... I’m gonna make some popcorn. Do you want some?” Is not what Stiles intends to say, but it’s what comes out. It’s not as if he can just waltz in and open with ‘Hey, so I noticed you were kind of reminded of your tragic past and don’t know how to deal with your emotions right now. Is there anything I can do to help?’

Actually, it’s not as if he could _ever_ say that.

“Yeah. Sure.” Derek has gone all monosyllabic again. It’s been awhile. Stiles sighs inwardly.

“So, you know how it’s Christmas soon, and all?” Stiles asks, searching the cupboard for popcorn to avoid the awkwardness of having to make eye contact.

“I’m aware, yes.”

“Well, I was _thinking_ that you could maybe come over for dinner.” He sees Derek tensing up immediately. “Like, I mean, my dad has been trying to come up with a way to apologise for the whole were-desk thing forever and it’d be pretty nice to have a third person at the table for the holidays again...”

He feels himself straying into _very_ dangerous territory, so he pulls back as quickly as possible. Judging by the extra tension he sees in Derek’s back, it’s not quite fast enough, but if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s changing the subject.

“Plus, you know he’s gonna be gone for most of Christmas Eve with work, and wouldn’t you just feel terrible if I got kidnapped by a rival wolf pack because you left me all on my lonesome?”

Derek has pulled his head out of the fridge long enough to raise his eyebrows.

“Hey, it could happen! I could be eating raw, freshly killed rabbit for Christmas dinner.” Stiles protests, finally tracking down the bags of microwave popcorn and popping one in to cook. “The whole pack would be all ‘How could we have prevented this _terrible_ tragedy? If only _somebody_ had gone to Stiles’ house and maybe baked some cookies with him’, and then you’d get me back in one piece, but I’d totally have food poisoning from the rabbit, and—“

“ _Alright_! If it’ll make you happy, I’ll come over.” Derek fixes him with a glare, but it’s so clearly lacking in any actual anger that Stiles is tempted to give the poor guy a hug. He’s woefully transparent.

“And stay the night.” Stiles adds, feeling bold. “It’ll probably be snowing and it’d be kind of crappy to invite you over and then be responsible for you freezing to death on the way home.”

Derek looks like he’s about to protest, but drops it almost immediately. Stiles can’t tell if it’s because he figures there’s no point, or because he’d actually love to stay the night but can’t admit it in any kind of straightforward way.

The microwave beeps and he grabs the still-too-hot bag, giving it a quick shake and dumping it into a bowl.

“Coming, grumpy?” He calls over his shoulder on the way back to the living room.

Derek rolls his eyes, but follows, grabbing a handful of popcorn straight out of the bowl.

He didn’t think they’d been gone that long, but when he walks back in, Lydia and Jackson have moved to occupy the armchair and Scott and Isaac are nowhere to be seen.

“Where did--?” He begins, but the entire room is already making a shrugging motion at him.

“Sent each other some texts, shared some weird looks, and then walked out to talk about it, I think.” Boyd tells him.

“Ten bucks says they’re boning out back.” Erica adds with a wicked grin.

“Let them have their privacy.” Derek admonishes, but there isn’t really any force behind it.

 

~

 

Stiles is the first of the group to leave after the movie. He has a tree of his own to decorate tomorrow, and his dad only has a few hours in the morning for it, so he needs to be well rested.

He climbs into the jeep, fumbling for his phone in the glove compartment, but not having much luck laying his hands on it. He turns the key in the ignition so he can get some light in the car, and as soon as he does the headlights flick on as well. He pauses, his hand finally about to close around his phone, as he gets an answer to the question of where Scott and Isaac disappeared to.

They’re pressed against the side of the house together, illuminated in the edges of the glow from his headlights, but far too preoccupied to notice. They’re locked together at the lips, Isaac’s hands running frantically through Scott’s hair and one of Scott’s hands already down Isaac’s pants.

“Oh my God, it’s a Christmas miracle!” Stiles exclaims, forgetting in his excitement that they can more than likely hear him.

Sure enough, Scott startles so thoroughly that he accidentally headbutts Isaac’s forehead, which – if the extra loud curses are anything to go by – causes him to bite his own tongue.

“Stiles!” Scott whirls around, throwing his arms out in his “what the hell is _wrong_ with you?!” gesture. It’s one that Stiles is intimately familiar with.

“Sorry! Sorry! I, uh, totally didn’t see anything. Just continue being young and reckless!” He throws the jeep into reverse as quickly as he can manage. “I’m going. Totally saw nothing. Nope. Nothing at all.”

Derek has appeared at the door at this point, obviously attracted by all the yelling. He watches Stiles turn and drive off down the trail with a bewildered expression on his face.

Judging by the four consecutive message alerts he hears from his phone a minute later, Scott is still back at the house sending message after message, yelling in caps lock at him.

 

  * **He’s allergic to mistletoe (????!)  
  
**



The entire house has been bedecked with every Christmas decoration Stiles could get his hands on for the last few days. He knows damn well he’s been obnoxious with the Christmas cheer, but really? He doesn’t care. ‘Tis the season.

He also may or may not have placed sprigs of mistletoe in several strategic locations. Strategic locations like over the front door, right before he’s expecting Derek to arrive, for instance. A guy can dream, right?

He’s expecting maybe an indulgent eye-roll and a peck on the cheek if he’s really lucky. More than likely it’ll just be the eye-roll, but he’ll take his chances. What he isn’t expecting, when the doorbell rings and he bounds over to pull Derek inside, is for the smile to slip immediately off his face and for him to collapse in on himself, looking up at Stiles in confusion and a certain amount of betrayal.

“Stiles?! What the hell—Nnngh. WHAT DID YOU DO?”

Stiles practically shoves Derek out onto the street, coughing and sputtering like he’s about to bring up one of his lungs. He runs out after him, completely freaking out. He doesn’t know what’s happening, where this came from, how to fucking stop it and oh my God, Derek looks like he’s about to puke. He wants to pile him into the jeep and take him to Deaton, get him to stop what’s happening, but as soon as they’re outside it seems to get better on its own. He ends up just standing by helplessly, wringing his hands, as the coughing fit gradually eases off.

“What. The hell. Did you _do_?” Derek bites out when he finally stops. He’s bent double with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

 

“Nothing. I don’t know. Oh God. What happened? What’s wrong?” He hovers around Derek, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, afraid to even touch him in case it happens again. In case he really did set it off. Whatever it was.

 

“I don’t know. It felt like... Maybe wolfsbane?” Derek seems as confused as he is.

“What, you think I went ahead and bought a couple of wolfsbane candles without realising?”

“Wouldn’t put it past you.” Derek mutters.

“Well, now, that is just uncalled for.” Even so, Stiles is trying to think back. Did he buy anything suspicious? Could someone have snuck in and lined the walls of the house with something toxic to werewolves? It seems unlikely, but what else could it be?

“Shut up and help me figure this out. Nothing happened when I was here a few days ago. What did you change since then?” Derek finally straightens up, looking slightly worse for wear, but Stiles sees no signs of scary black goo or sudden fainting, so he figures it’s not too bad.

“Not much. I made some cookies, put up a few more decorations, just... normal Christmas stuff. Is that it? Are you allergic to Christmas?”

“No, of course I’m not—OH MY GOD YOU PUT UP MISTLETOE, DIDN’T YOU?!” All of the confusion changes to exasperation in the space of a second.

“Of course I did! It’s a damn Christmas tradition!” Stiles flings his arms wide. “What’s wrong with mistletoe?”

“You _asshole_. Are you trying to kill me?”

“Are you telling me you’re _allergic_ to _mistletoe_? I mean I know I joke about you being allergic to fun, but this is ridiculous.”

“I’m not _allergic_ , it’s used the same way as mountain ash and wolfsbane. I thought you were supposed to be doing plant lore?”

“Do you _know_ how many different kinds of plants there are? I’m still up in the F’s. Do you really expect me to know what every plant ever is going to do?”

“I don’t know, you could probably learn which ones are most likely to _poison_ me before you invite me over. Just a thought.”

Suddenly Stiles’ dad appear in the doorway, asking why in the hell they’re having a screaming match in his driveway while they let all the heat out of the house.

Stiles launches into the beginning of a long-winded tirade about werewolves trying to ruin Christmas with their allergies, but Derek just cuts across him.

“Mistletoe. Need to get rid of it. Now.” He’s still slightly wheezy and red in the face, reminding Stiles uncomfortably of Scott just after an asthma attack. Which, dammit, was a feeling he thought he’d never have to deal with again after Scott got the bite.

To his dad’s credit, after a second in which he seems to open his mouth to ask some follow-up questions and then decide he doesn’t want to know, he just nods and tosses Derek his keys.

“It’s freezing out here, go sit in the cruiser and turn the heat on.” He jerks his head towards the house. “Stiles, get your butt back in the house and help gather up this mistletoe so we can have dinner. It’s a two-man job.”

With that, he turns and walks into the house, snagging the mistletoe off the doorframe as he goes. Stile flashes an apologetic smile at Derek (who is still standing, nonplussed, with the keys in his hand) and heads in after him.

Ten minutes later, he’s calling Derek into the mistletoe free house and burning the sprigs he’d gathered up in the back yard while Derek watches darkly from the kitchen.

“Ok, it’s gone now, you big werewolf baby. You can quit scowling, nobody’s gonna poison you for the rest of the day.” He says as soon as he’s stamped out the embers, well aware that Derek can hear him from his place at the table.

 

  * **HE’S AN AMAZING KISSER!!!!!**



It’s Christmas Eve, two days after the mistletoe incident, and against all expectations, Stiles has actually enticed Derek over to his house with a minimum of grumbling.

It may have involved a lot more guilt-tripping about the fact that Derek would be leaving Stiles all alone and breaking his heart if he didn’t come, but hey, it worked, didn’t it?

It ends up being nauseatingly domestic. Cookies are baked, awful holiday movies are watched, and they both eat their own body weight in junk food. It’s never acknowledged out loud, but Stiles can tell Derek is grateful to be spared another holiday spent in an empty house.

They finish out the day sprawled diagonally across Stiles’ bed, sleepy and content.

“What were you using that for?” Derek asks, hanging his head upside-down over the edge of Stiles’ bed, distracted by the sight of a hot glue gun on the desk. He turns and gets up, pulling the plug out where it had been left in. Stiles takes it from him, barely avoiding rolling off the bed, and puts it safely back in its box.

“Oh, yeah. I, um...” Stiles ducks his head, hoping he isn’t blushing. He reaches over and picks up some pieces of dark green paper, cut in the shape of leaves and tied together, that he’d glued a few small marbles to. Derek sits back down on the bed and Stiles plops down beside him, raising it above their heads.

“I felt kind of bad about the whole nearly-poisoning-you thing, so here! I made some hypoallergenic mistletoe that won’t kill anybody. Can I get that kiss now?” He says it without thinking - nearly meaning it as a joke, except for how he doesn’t – and visibly freezes the instant it’s out of his mouth. So, he’s pretty much screwed at this point. He had a hope of Derek not noticing the slight shift in his heartbeat, but he’s made it far too obvious now. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He drops the faux-mistletoe down onto the bed and folds his arms, mentally cursing himself and refusing to meet Derek’s eyes. Honestly, Stiles is expecting him to bolt at any second. Months of keeping quiet about his feelings when he wanted to scream them from the roof-tops, all ruined in a single stupid slip-up.

Except...

If he’s not crazy, Derek’s breathing has picked up the same way his has.

Maybe. Just... Maybe.

He clamps down on the panic rising in his throat, threatening to spill over and overwhelm him. If he can stare down every supernatural bastard Beacon Hills has to throw at him, he can certainly face Derek right now.

In theory. Oh boy, he is _screwed_.

“Are... Are you serious?” Derek’s voice is uncharacteristically small; unsure in a way that he usually never lets on.

Stiles can’t get any words out past the sudden lump in his throat, but he nods tightly, his hands clenched into fists in his lap. There’s no point in not being honest at this point.

“Hey. Hey, c’mere.” Derek puts his fingers gently under Stiles’ chin, turning his face towards him.

When Stiles finally tears his eyes away from the floor and brings them up to meet Derek’s, they look just as unsure as he feels.

“So, you...?” He starts, but can’t seem to find the end of the sentence.

“Yes.” Derek answers anyway.

That kind of seals the deal for Stiles. He leans in towards Derek slowly – giving him time to change his mind, to say no or to push him away – and stops with their lips just short of meeting, unable to make the final push. Derek smiles and closes the last bit of distance between them, moving his hand from under Stiles’ chin to run his fingers through Stiles’ hair.

It’s different to how he thought it would be; he always imagined things with Derek would be hot and heavy – fast-paced, out of breath, hands everywhere while he got up close and personal with Derek’s teeth – but his lips on Stiles’ are nothing but sweet, hesitant even. In the end it’s Stiles who moves them forward, deepening the kiss as he pushes Derek back onto the bed. He leans in to capture Derek’s lips in his, but overbalances slightly and ends up landing on his side beside Derek, their legs tangled together.

One second they’re just lying side by side like that – both laughing in a way that Stiles would call giggling if he didn’t think Derek would object to the word – and the next Derek is tensing, pulling away as his eyes widen.

“No. No. We can’t, we shouldn’t be doing do this. No. We just. I have to. I—“ He backs away, getting to his feet and nearly falling off the bed in his haste. Stiles feels like somebody has dumped a bucket of ice-water over him.

“Derek. Derek, stop. Come back here.” He scrambles off the bed after Derek, grabbing onto his wrist before he can flee the scene and never return.

Because he knows damn well that if Derek leaves, he is very much not coming back. Possibly ever. Stiles would sadly not put it past him to emigrate to avoid dealing with his feelings. And dammit, he doesn’t care if Derek doesn’t want to be with him that way—

Ok, that’s a lie; he can feel the heartbreak and the horrible feeling of abandonment sneaking up on him even with Derek still in the room. But fuck. He cannot even _begin_ to deal with the idea of Derek not being a part of his life at all.

So he grabs onto Derek’s wrist like it’s his only lifeline. Like maybe if he holds on tight enough he can stop this from happening.

“You get back here and talk to me, you asshole. You don’t. You can’t just. You’re not leaving until you at least tell me why.” He can feel that familiar bloom of panic in his chest. He imagines – as he always does. He can’t really stop himself, for all that it’s the opposite of helpful – that he can actually feel the adrenaline leaking into his veins like poison. “You can’t say that you—You can’t run off without telling me why, ok? You _don’t_. You don’t get to do that.“

“I can leave if I want to.” It seems to come out of Derek’s mouth on autopilot; being contradictory for the sake of it. It’s broken and shaky around the edges, and it’s the exact opposite of what needs to be said right now.

“Stop it! Just. We both like each other. Or I thought we did. For, like, the best thirty seconds of my young life right there.” He resists the urge to run his hands through his hair, knowing that it would mean letting go of Derek. He takes a deep breath to steady himself. “Look. Do you like me?”

Derek nods.

“As more than friends?”

“I. Yes.”

“Good. Because I like you as more than friends too. So, let’s, I dunno, quit making things harder than they need to be?” He’s not sure if any of that hit the mark. Or if that even made sense. Hell, Derek’s just lucky that what’s coming out of his mouth right now is actually English.

Derek is still frozen in place, so obviously it sounded as silly to him as it did to Stiles.

“Use your words, Derek.”

“It’s... Not a good idea. For us to be together.” Is what Derek finally comes up with.

Stiles might take that, he really might, if it weren’t for how incredibly pained Derek seems when he says it.

“Is this one of those ‘I can never be happy for I am the tragic protagonist’ things? Because I’m so over that bullshit even in fiction – you have no idea – so it’s not really gonna fly in real life. Sorry. Try again.”  Stiles would be more forgiving, but he knows damn well what Derek is doing; because it’s exactly what he’s been doing this whole damn time. Stiles has no idea why, but he suspects that somewhere down the line, Derek took a look at himself and just decided that he wasn’t allowed to have nice things.

Most days Stiles has all the sympathy in the world about this stuff – Derek has pretty much earned a lifetime pass on being judged for his issues just for still being able to get up in the morning – but right now? Right now Derek is being an idiot, and Stiles is not in any fit state to be nice about it.

“It’s not—I’m not good for you. You’re not good for me. We—Just. It’s a bad idea.” He finishes, eyes still wide; still frozen to the spot.

“Yeah? Well I think that’s _crap_. And I’m betting that deep down, you do too.” He never realised how necessary his hands are to his speech before. Not being able to gesture with them feels like somebody cut his vocabulary in half; it’s the most frustrating thing. “Stop being this big iceberg of angst for five minutes so we can talk about this properly!”

Funnily enough, that seems to be what gets Derek to snap out of it. Like Stiles was ridiculous to the point that Derek forgot to stay frozen in the face of it. He huffs out a fairly humourless laugh and lets his shoulders sag, drifting back over to the bed. He buries his face in his hands, shaking with something that seems to be in between sobbing and laughter. Stiles follows, pulling Derek’s hands gently down from his face.

“Hey. So... You panicked. I panicked. We freaked out at each other. That’s ok.” He’s trying his best to manage a soothing voice, despite the fact that he’s about an inch away from just lying down on the bed and crying. “This is—This is new. And new stuff is scary. Especially when you’ve really wanted it to happen.”

Derek nods.

“So, what we’re gonna do is this: We’re gonna lie back down on the bed, because if I don’t find somewhere to lie down right now, I’m gonna collapse in a big ball of nervous exhaustion, and that won’t be helpful.” He shrugs, because it is what it is. There’s no point in sugar-coating it. Not to mention the fact that Derek looks like he’s in a similar position. “Is that ok?”

This time the nod comes with a small smile, which Stiles finds encouraging. He scoots across the bed, reaching over to pull Derek down with him after it becomes apparent that he’s not going to be moving himself.

“I’m not a threat, you know. You don’t have to go all deer-in-the-headlights.”

“I’m not a deer, I’m a werewolf.” Derek grumbles indignantly, but he settles in after that all the same.

 

  * **Also an A+ cuddler. Five stars, would recommend.**



 

Lying down had definitely been one of Stiles’ better plans. They hadn’t talked things out as much as he’d have liked, but by Derek’s general talking-about-feelings standards, it was pretty huge.

They’re under the covers now, facing each other with their legs loosely tangled. Derek has his arm draped over Stiles’ waist. The alarm on Stiles’ phone set for midnight – to tell them when it’s officially Christmas, and to make sure they’re awake and slightly less intimate when Stiles’ dad comes home at one. Stiles is playing absently with Derek’s hair, a smile playing across his lips as he looks into Derek’s eyes.

They’ve gone from nought to sixty on the nauseating scale in a ridiculously short space of time, Stiles thinks, and he honestly couldn’t be happier about it.

He’s nearly asleep when the chorus of Call Me Maybe starts blasting out of his phone, signalling midnight.

“You are a ridiculous human being.” Derek tells him flatly, not bothering to open his eyes.

Stiles is too blissed out to even respond to that, because he’d have several things to say on the subject that might ruin the mood slightly, so he just plants a quick kiss on Derek’s lips.

“Merry Christmas, Derek.”

“Merry Christmas, Stiles.”

**Author's Note:**

> *The line in question is, of course "Think of the pee, Derek". I am still cackling about that one.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it =]
> 
> By the way, not that I'm expecting any, but my policy on fan-art is: "YES PLEASE, I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER. PLEASE SHOW IT TO ME WHEN YOU'RE DONE SO I CAN BASK IN ITS GLORY." Just so everyone knows.
> 
> Also if you want to message/follow me on Tumblr my url is lucy-in-the-soup-with-croutons.tumblr.com


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